Trump Has Already Missed Some Major Deadlines in the Delegate Election Process

Including in Arizona and Virginia, where he won. He'll have those delegates on the first ballot, bound as they are to vote for him by law, but since he didn't get anyone loyal to him elected to be delegates, they'll probably be voting for others on the second ballot.

Trump's team is only now starting to engage in the delegate selection process, the choosing of the actual people who will attend and vote at the convention. Republicans have already selected delegates in at least nine states. And in others, such as Virginia and Arizona, the deadline to apply to be a delegate has passed.

Indiana's primary, for example, won't take place until next month. But the deadline to become a national convention delegate was in mid-March.

Cruz has built an organization of volunteers who are working in state after state to get his supporters selected as delegates, even those who must vote for Trump at first.

Trump is just ramping up his operation, but in some states he's too late.

In Virginia -- a state where Trump won the primary -- he has missed the deadlines to assemble lists of potential delegates. Cruz, however, has delegate candidates in 10 of Virginia's 11 congressional districts.

Trump has done a better job of getting his delegates elected in Nevada and Michigan.

This weekend Lindsey claimed he was duly elected as a delegate to the state Republican convention but had been barred from the proceedings by the powers that be to prevent him from casting a vote for Trump's slate of national delegates. Mollie Hemingway debunked that, claiming per local GOP officials that Lindsey had been elected as a delegate to his county caucus, not to the state convention, and that he'd never showed up at the county caucus to run for state delegate. He was barred from the state convention, in other words, because, er, he wasn’t a delegate to the state convention. Could that explain why Lindsey, seemingly uniquely among Trump supporters at the Colorado convention, had trouble getting his credentials? Well, no: Like I say, the narrative calls for chicanery somewhere in this process, so the new story is that Lindsey may well have missed a meeting -- but only because shadowy operatives loyal to Cruz wanted him to.

Nominate me -- I'm totally unprepared and I just bullshit my way through everything.

I like that type of character in Bill Murray movies, but I don't think I want a President Winger.

I found that pretty ugly, suggesting, as it did, that the only reason to want a wall was racism.

However, I am finding some truth in it. The core tenet of Identity Politics is that your own tribe is pure, and that your own tribe is oppressed, and there is always some great conspiracy of the other tribes -- the vicious, ugly tribes that want to keep you down -- who are responsible for your failings.

Identity Politics is at its core simply a racially (or gender-) tinged Conspiracy Theory. All new pieces of information -- particularly information about people not wishing for you to have political power -- are simply new evidences and exemplars of the Conspiracy Theory.

This guy's showing up at the wrong convention, then admitting maybe he missed a meeting, then blaming his failure to do the thing he wanted to do on The Man Just Trying to Keep Him Down, sure looks to me like a warm, sloppy embrace of the most repulsive aspects of Identity Politics -- the constant naming of scapegoats for one's shortcomings, failures, and missed opportunities.

This sort of politics of resentment works, to a degree, because nothing animates people politically like the feeling that they're being unfairly treated.

But like most politics of resentment, it ultimately becomes very silly and self-indulgent, as people keep upping the ante as far as their claims of oppression and tribal disrespect and shadowy conspiracies of the Out-Group to keep the virtuous members of the In-Group down.

That's not to say that Trump supporters, conservatives generally, or Americans as a whole don't have good reason to feel resentment. I feel resentment, and I think a lot of that is justified.

But then, of course, blacks have good reason to feel resentment at the nation -- but that doesn't mean they haven't gone off the deep end with their privilege patrols and #SafeSpaces and claims that noting Obama plays golf is a racist put-down.

And that's what I think I see right here -- resentment simply feeding off itself and shitting out new resentments. Guy shows up to the wrong caucus in Colorado? Damnit, he must have been tricked and duped by those wily Ted Cruz operatives.

Everyone remember when Colorado announced its convention rules? That's right -- last August. Seems to me that that should be plenty of time to read a damn two or three pages of rules and deadlines.

But no; some people are eternally late with the rent money, and you know, it's always someone else's fault for that. My cousin Chicky? Yeah he was supposed to repay me some money for his alpaca farm start-up. He didn't come through for me. It's his fault the rent is late. Why don't you call Chicky and see if you can shake some money out of him? At least maybe you could get a few alpacas to tide you over.

It's never our own fault. Even when it is our own fault, it's really someone else's fault -- in a deeper way. A deeper truth demonstrates that we are faultless.

We're the Good Ones -- the Pure -- the Oppressed. The #Unprivileged. Definitionally, we cannot do wrong.

And meanwhile the Alex Jones friendly Drudge site shits out another series of "They're all against us" headlines.